News and Citizen Archive 

In 1881, with support from prominent local citizens, L. Halsey Lewis and Henry C. Fisk consolidated two Lamoille County, Vermont weekly newspapers, the Vermont Citizen and the Lamoille News, to form the News and Citizen. Fisk left the enterprise in 1886, but Lewis served as editor and publisher until 1922.

Over the many decades that he published the News and Citizen, Lewis devoted a notable amount of space to local, state, and national news. In 1884, in response to readers' complaints that he was favoring advertising over news, Lewis promised that advertisements would no longer be included in the local column. His correspondents reported people's comings and goings, but also very conscientiously and consistently reported on local activities, events, and issues. As a result, the News and Citizen provides a remarkably detailed record of how Lamoille County, and especially the villages of Morrisville and Hyde Park, responded to the challenges and opportunities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

When Lewis retired in 1922, Arthur A. Twiss took over as editor and manager. He arranged to have the News and Citizen printed by the Morrisville press that published the rival Messenger-Sentinel list of weeklies for the Lamoille County communities of Morrisville, Johnson, Wolcott, Stowe, Jeffersonville, and Cambridge. Twenty years later, Arthur B. Limoge, the owner of the Messenger-Sentinel list, acquired the News and Citizen. He planned to add it to the list, but in response to a post office decision that required more original content in each title to retain second-class mailing privileges, Limoge eliminated all of the titles except the News and Citizen. He recognized that "generations have continually taken the News and Citizen and that it has become an important part of...everyday life." Generations of the Limoge family have continued to operate the paper for over 70 years. Arthur's son Clyde became the publisher after Arthur's death in 1958, and his grandson, Bradley, joined the paper in 1973.